He arrived in this world he once knew, much like he came into it the first time: alone.
He searched long and hard, trying to remember where he had been, and what he had done that fateful day.
When he found that which he sought, he was looking into eyes that were once his.
He gazed upon a face not yet hardened by the years he had seen; not yet marred by lines of a wisdom that was obtained through no small amount of difficulties.
The man who stood before him now, had a physique reminiscent of a welterweight prize fighter-it was one that he had not known for quite some time now.
That strapping young man before him, with a full head of hair and a mouth full of white teeth, squinted his eyes at him, inquisitively, through the distance.
The elder of the two men opened his mouth to garner the attention of the younger, and stopped, suddenly.
He remembered how he had gotten the scars on his body; how many years of hard living he had forced himself through.
He wheeled around suddenly, dodging people on the crowded street, as the curious young man who had nearly recognized him tried to fight through the flooded streets to pursue a man whom he could not place as a memory, but still recalled, albeit hauntingly.
As the elder man dashed madly away, losing the man many years his junior, he shook his head in disgust, and scoffed at himself.
“How stupid of me, to think I could change things.”
He turned around one last time, and took a look at the man he once was, and promptly pivoted in the opposite direction.
He knew he would never listen.
(c) David Zmuda 2013